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Monday, July 25, 2011

Pirates Week in Review: July 18-July24

This is going to be a weekly post that I thought would be a nice addition to the site. This is going to be a Pirates weekly review where I go over the results for the past seven days and link up the box scores and the recap for each of the games. I also use the lovely FanGraphs and Baseball Reference to give you the box scores and the weekly stats for the team. I will try to have this up either late Sunday night or early Monday mornings, but you know how these things go.

Here is the Bucs weekly recap for this past week:

The Pirates went 3-3 on the week which was the start of a brutal stretch of games against some of the best teams in the NL Central and East. The Pirates found themselves in first place for some portion of the week as well as never being more than a game back of first place. The pitching staff was excellent to start the week but started to fade near the end and the offense left a lot to be desired, but that makes the 3-3 record that much more impressive.

It wasn't really a good week overall for any of the hitters as the Pirates offense wasn't good for a great deal of the week. Chase d'Arnaud led all hitters with five hits for the week, which can somewhat tell you something about how the week went for the hitters. Although d'Arnaud had the team lead in hits he had an abysmal wOBA of .268 while being forced into the lead off spot while Alex Presley was forced to miss the final two games of the Cardinals series with a banged up thumb. Five other Pirates had four hits which includes Michael McKenry, Andrew McCutchen, Presley, Ronny Cedeno and Neil Walker. Cedeno was a nice surprise after coming off the DL and only playing in three games and his two double performance on Sunday basically won the team the game. Lyle Overbay and Garrett Jones really had a tough week. Both stuck out over 20% of their plate appearances and both combined for only four hits. Overbay also didn't play very good defense and you have to wonder if he is going to be on the field much longer with a -15 wRC+ and a .151 wOBA.

The pitching wasn't that great this past week but there was some good things that happened over the week. James McDonald had his best start of the season against the Reds with 6.1 innings of scoreless work before being lifted. McDonald walked a few more batters than you would like but overall a great start. Charlie Morton made two starts and had a solid week. His first start saw him sit out almost 90 minutes because of a rain delay before coming back and blanking the Reds for five innings. Morton worked a 2.61 ERA for the week despite having an xFIP of 5.22. Joe Beimel had a nice week. In four appearances he didn't give up a single run and worked a 13.5 K/9 for the week. New signee Jason Grilli also had a couple of nice appearances, not giving up a run. Kevin Correia continues to not be able to pitch well at PNC Park with his only start of the week as he only went 4.2 innings in a loss where the Reds hit .333 off of him. Paul Maholm also had a tough game as hitters hit .368 off of him.

The Pirates hit .220 as a team in the six game, which was good for the fourth worst mark in the league. Not a good week for the Bucs. Combine that with a .241 wOBA and a 47 wRC+ led them to be one of only three teams with a negative offensive team WAR for the week. The Bucs only picked up 41 hits in six games and they weren't taking a ton of pitches, only drawing walks in 5% of their plate appearances.

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The pitchers did a nice job, overall, last week for the Pirates and were the main reason the team was able to pick up three wins against tough NL competition. The team ERA for the week was 3.11 which was good for ninth in the league and was spearheaded by back-to-back shutouts to start the week against the Reds. The Pirates continue to not strike anyone out (5.24 K/9) and although they did walk a good bit of batters (3.93 BB/9) they were able to strand a ton of runners (82.4%).